Can the HTC Incredible replace my dedicated devices; my ipod?

[Comdrpopnfresh]

I've never owned or used a smartphone before, but am strongly considering purchasing an htc incredible to replace my current moto rizr z6tv on the verizon network. I'm wondering how far along integrated phone features are- can they compete and beat my aging dedicated devices?
I'm interested to know if the incredible is 'better' than the following, which I currently own and use (I have a 2gb microsd card to add to the incredible):
+canon sd550 7.1mp digital camera
+apple ipod nano 4gb 1st-gen running rockbox with winamp media player on pc
+a dedicated gps nav unit (I don't own one, but should the need arise, where would the incredible stand next to, say, a good tomtom gps unit?)

I'm most interested about possibly replacing my 5 year old ipod with the incredible: I got progressively tired of itunes and the apple ipod firmware (ui and functionality) and have faithfully used the rockbox-winamp combination for the last three years. I'm ready for a bigger screen, larger storage capacity, native video playback w/ varying file formats, and music playback runtime > my current ~3-5 hrs on the ipod.
can the incredible be used with winamp? Also, I have a win7 pc w/ a video transcoding capable ati gfx card. So, I'm interested in the incredible's supported media formats, and if it works well with win7's device stage, include the ati drag-n-drop transcoding acceleration.

Finally- if I'm fairly electronically inclined and good with pc's and such, is the switch to this smartphone going to go well, or will I be completely lost or ignorantly underusing the capabilities of the phone?

 

[zerocool84]

Well if you don't care about battery life then sure cus if you listen to a lot of music you'll need to charge your phone a lot. Dedicated music players usually get good battery life and you can spare the battery life so you can use your phone to surf the web or talk or text on it. You can get 4GB MP3 players for really cheap now-a-days.

No phone today will replace a dedicated camera. If you care about photos then keep the camera.

Google Maps Navigation is very good but it's all up to you. It's free and is very reliable so that's your call on that one.

 

[Bateluer]

+canon sd550 7.1mp digital camera - Not a chance in hell. Perhaps if you had an antique <2MP camera, but even that would be pushing it. Cell phone cameras have come along way, but dedicated digital cameras still easily beat them. Still, the Incredible will take decent pictures in the spur of the moment when you don't have your Canon on you. Its also easy to FB them or UL them to your web host.
+apple ipod nano 4gb 1st-gen running rockbox with winamp media player on pc - I'd say yes, though you will need to charge the phone more often. Not sure what the battery life is on your 1G Nano, but my 2G Nano was down to about 3 or 4 hours after 20 months of use. Odds are the Incredible would beat that battery life now.
+a dedicated gps nav unit (I don't own one, but should the need arise, where would the incredible stand next to, say, a good tomtom gps unit?) - I've never owned a dedicated GPS unit, but I've used the GPS on my Droid extensively, several times in friends vehicles that had GPS units. Usually my Droid would lock on the GPS signal faster and plot a course faster than the dedicated units, but the dedicated units had more options for customizing the routes/directions, also, more options for construction and road closures. Granted, those are paid features

 

[Pliablemoose]

Not exactly, the MP3 replacement is the weakest feature you're trying to duplicate, although this fall, the software should be getting a long needed update.

Battery life will be an issue though, but if you were to get a cradle and a spare battery or an extra charger, along with a car charger, you should be pretty close to replacing what you want.

 

[Bateluer]

Not exactly, the MP3 replacement is the weakest feature you're trying to duplicate, although this fall, the software should be getting a long needed update.

Care to elaborate? I can't speak for the Incredible and Sense, but my Moto Droid plays all manner of music just as good as my 3G Nano, with support for a lot more formats. Music app was revamped for Cyanogen though.

 

[TheStu]

How much do you care about being able to blind control your music on the Nano? For me at least, I need to be able to control my player without looking at it (in the car, in my pocket, whilst reading, whatever) and I cannot do that on an all touch screen device easily.

As for the camera. How large is your point and shoot? 'The best camera is the one you have with you' and so unless you carry your point and shoot with you everywhere, the Incredible should be ok with maybe 90&#37; of the photos most people take.

GPS... Android phones get turn-by-turn, which is nice and yes, the TomToms and Garmins do have more features, points of interests, things of that nature but it should be ok.

 

[dguy6789]

Battery isn't an issue because you can always buy a spare battery or a larger battery. Tons and tons of options exist.

In my experience, Google Maps Navigation is MUCH better than Garmin navigation. Higher frame rate, more accurate, easier to compare alternate routes, more powerful and helpful search. Being able to see the phone number and a picture of the place you're going to is awesome.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

i'm a google maps navs fan. it gives you traffic and has integrated google maps which is prolly just as good or better than the pre-loaded POIs on a dedicated gps.

 

[A5]

Care to elaborate? I can't speak for the Incredible and Sense, but my Moto Droid plays all manner of music just as good as my 3G Nano, with support for a lot more formats. Music app was revamped for Cyanogen though.

The stock (and Sense) music apps aren't very good. Supposedly Froyo makes it better, but I haven't used it yet.

 

[basslover1]

The Sense Muisc app is leaps and bounds better than the stock Android version, and IMO it's just as good as the iPod app on my old 3GS.

Sure, I haven't used an iPhone in about 7 months, but I don't feel like I'm missing anything.

 

[boomhower]

Doubletwist is a great a music app for Android. It will be fine for replacing an iPod, use the Doubletwist desktop software and you can sync your music and playlist fro iTunes as well.

 

[bucwylde23]

The incredible is fine for all of the things you listed except for the camera. It takes good pics but no where near as good as my oldest Canon point and shoot.

It's replaced pretty much every other device for me, but I still use my iPod Classic (waiting for a new Zune/iPod Touch). I drive pretty far every day and listen to a lot of podcasts/music while driving, and also while at work. I'd rather save my phone charge. I listen to my iPod probably about 10 hrs a day, and the Incredible sucks up battery life when you start to use it heavily like I do.

 

[exdeath]

Megapixels mean nothing. How good a camera is, is 99&#37; determined by the optics, which suck on a cell phone no matter how good the sensor is. Really, how good is a 1mm deep 3 mm wide lens going to be?

The pics from the new phones are good and useable for daily snapping of random things, but quickly reveal their junk lens when enlarged to 100% next to the same pic taken from a lower megapixel real camera.

It's like going from a top of the line CRT to a LCD; at some point it gets 'good enough' you decide to put up with an acceptable loss for the convenience, but you are still going to want to pull out that 35mm SLR for weddings and things like that. You just don't have to carry with you all the time anymore.

For the rest, the device can replace all those other things yes, but keep in mind when collapsing 4 devices into 1, you are now doing all those things with 1 battery instead of 4. A car and desktop cradle can alleviate that, but you have a new burden of always being concious of battery life on the go.

 

[dguy6789]

Obviously a cell phone camera won't satisfy a camera or photography enthusiast, but phone cameras have long past the quality needed to satisfy someone who just wants to take pictures of stuff.

 

[Comdrpopnfresh]

are there any good music playing phones on the verizon network that don't require either the 9.99/mo or 29.99/mo data plans?

maybe one with wifi?

is it even possible to get a decent verizon phone w/o getting roped into data plans?

 

[Pollock]

I don't think I can stand the Sense music player on my Incredible much longer. The shuffle is easily the most frustrating thing, as instead of creating a new shuffled playlist, it chooses the next song at random. This means that I very frequently get the same songs over and over again and never hear others. I've even had cases where the same song came up THREE TIMES IN A ROW (out of like 300+ songs). Simply unacceptable. It's also a little slow when switching how you sort your songs or scrolling.

But that's my only real issue, that and battery life, since I use it for everything. Google Maps/Navigation will be fine. I had a decent Garmin but gave it to my parents and switched to this. It's really nice to search Google Maps for something you want, anything you want, and then just navigate to it.

I think the camera takes nice pictures, but I'm not much of a photographer. I don't use my cheap/decent point and shoot anymore, as it's so much more convenient to carry one device instead of 2-4.

Browsing the internet, checking email, etc. is incredibly (pardon the pun) useful, though.